Ricardo Pepi is absolute proof that a rose can grow in the desert.
The striker for the U.S. Men’s National Team was born in El Paso in 2003 to parents who lived in a trailer in nearby San Elizario, his 16-year-old mother, Annette and his 23-year-old father, Daniel.
Pepi will be with the USMNT on Wednesday evening as the U.S. faces Bosnia and Herzegovina at the FIFA World Cup in Santa Clara, Calif., not literally so far from those origins but figuratively on the other end of the world.
“We kind of started our life from nothing, trying to live day by day,” Daniel Pepi recalled in The Long Game, a 2026 book about U.S. men’s soccer. “Back in El Paso, life was not that easy. Starting a family, you have to work long days and sometimes it’s really hard.”
Besides his genes and a love of soccer (his parents met on a soccer field), Ricardo Pepi inherited from his parents a work ethic that enabled them to give their son a chance.
That, and his massive talent, is all Ricardo needed to go on the long journey that has led him to the biggest soccer stage in the world. Along with USMNT teammate Alejandro Zendejas, who grew up on the West Side of El Paso, Pepi showed that El Paso can be a launch point to the big time. No dream is too large for an El Pasoan.
Pepi’s path was actually fairly direct. His father was his soccer coach for a while and scraped together the means to travel and get his son exposure in Texas and New Mexico.
“You start noticing these little things and start thinking, ‘They’re putting in a big effort for me to make it to these tournaments, so then I better go out there and actually make it happen,'” Ricardo Pepi was quoted as saying in The Long Game. “It was difficult because I just put a lot of pressure on myself. I wanted to help my family back in some way.”
By the time Ricardo was 10, his team became an affiliate of FC Dallas El Paso, and from there, his trajectory was set. By 13, he was at FC Dallas’ Academy in the Metroplex; at 16, he was an honorary first signing of North Texas SC, the USL 1 affiliate of FC Dallas. He scored a hat trick in his first game with them, a 3-2 win, and not long after, signed with FC Dallas at age 16, their fourth-youngest player ever to sign.
He scored his first MLS goal in 2020, the first of 15 goals over three seasons with FC Dallas as he earned his European shot.
Pepi’s first stop was Augsburg of the German Bundesliga in 2022, and while that didn’t work out, a loan to FC Groningen in the Dutch league (officially ranked the sixth best league in Europe, and thus the world, by FIFA) went very well and Pepi has been a star player in the Dutch Eredivisie ever since. He is currently with the league champions PSV Eindhoven.
His stints with the U.S. national team haven’t always been easy. Given a choice between the U.S. or Mexico (both of his parents are natives of Mexico and he is a dual citizen with options to play for either team), he picked the U.S., then stuck with them after he was a surprising omission from the 2022 World Cup team.
He stayed loyal to the U.S. and that has finally been repaid as he’s started the last two World Cup matches.
Now is Pepi’s moment, as he represents a path for every El Pasoan. El Paso can produce great things.
“Alex Zendejas and Pepi,” 10-year-old Eden Cruz said when asked who he wanted to be like during the US-Turkiye watch party at Cleveland Square. His parents, next to him, were in Zendejas jerseys.
Behind him, a gaggle of young people were playing soccer at an improvised field on the other side of Cleveland Square, dreaming of being the next Ricardo Pepi.
This is Pepi’s time, it’s Zendejas’ time and it’s also El Paso’s time, proof that beautiful things are grown in the desert.
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: USMNT’s Ricardo Pepi at World Cup is an inspiration for all of El Paso
